


The Therapist

by Impossibly_Izzy



Series: I Don't Wanna Let You Go [4]
Category: Brooklyn Nine-Nine (TV)
Genre: Arguing, Episode S06 E11: the Therapist, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Therapy, This is about my niche ship but I also fixed The Therapist, they're dumb but they love each other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-15
Updated: 2019-09-15
Packaged: 2020-10-19 09:00:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,031
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20654606
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Impossibly_Izzy/pseuds/Impossibly_Izzy
Summary: Jake was convinced that the therapist was the murderer. He was obviously wrong, and obviously masking his feelings, and obviously in denial about the fact that he needed therapy.





	The Therapist

**Author's Note:**

> This was originally uploaded as part of my one-shot collection, but I decided I would be happier with it as a standalone story. You don't need to have read any of my other stories to understand it - except to know that Jake and Charles are married.

Jake was convinced that the therapist was the murderer. He was obviously wrong, and obviously masking his feelings, and _obviously_ in denial about the fact that he needed therapy.

‘He’s creepy!’ he said.

‘Can you just _look_ at the other suspects?’ Charles pleaded.

On their first case together after he had got out of prison, Jake had started freaking out and let the suspect go out of fear of imprisoning someone innocent. And even once he was back to what someone less close to him might have thought of as his usual self, there had still been something a little off. Sometimes he would get quiet and distant, but insisted that nothing was wrong when Charles asked him about it.

And there were moments when his confidence slipped, when he doubted his intuition on a case or lost his nerve. And it wasn’t just Charles who had noticed.

‘I’m worry about him, boo,’ Gina had said, visiting Charles in the hospital when he was recovering from being stabbed. It was normal for Charles to fret about things, but for Gina to admit to being worried about someone, something _must_ have been wrong. ‘He was really freaking out about you getting hurt.’

Every time Charles tried to talk to him about it, Jake shut down the conversation. Charles would say something about his own therapist with a plan to make a cautious suggestion, and Jake would already be saying, ‘Hey, do you wanna see that new Marvel movie at the weekend?’. Jake jumped from one topic to another so much anyway that it took Charles a while to realise that he was doing it on purpose, stubbornly refusing to talk about therapy.

It was frustrating, and it was worrying, and it was at serious risk of ruining Charles’ case.

Jake was definitely onto something here. And Charles wasn’t listening because he was obsessed with therapy. Obviously, Jake was glad Charles liked therapy, glad that it made him happy. Jake was in favour of _anything_ that made his husband happy. But Charles was letting it get in the way of his judgement on this case – and if he wasn’t going to listen to Jake, then Jake was just going to have to investigate it on his own until he could get some definitive proof that the therapist was guilty.

Which was how he got caught snooping around the therapist office.

‘Hello?’ said the lady suspiciously. She was another therapist, Jake was pretty sure.

‘I’m your next patient,’ he said, like an idiot.

‘Great, come in.’

So, this was happening now. Coolcoolcoolcoolcool. This was fine, Jake could do this. All he had to do was come up with an hour’s worth of therapy bullshit. He sank onto the sofa.

‘So…’ the therapist opened a binder and consulted its contents. ‘_Daniel_. Tell me a bit about yourself – why is it that you’ve sought out therapy?’

‘My husband said I should,’ Jake said, quickly.

‘Ah,’ she said. ‘So what in particular did you want to talk about?’

‘Uh…’ Jake floundered for something to talk about. Years’ worth of undercover personas came back to him. A wife who died? Someone who double-crossed him and left him for dead? A dark sexual secret? The therapist was beginning to look at him oddly – he needed to pick something! ‘My parents got divorced,’ he blurted.

‘Ah,’ she said, again. ‘And how did that make you feel?’

‘Uh, pretty bad, not gonna lie,’ Jake said. ‘They kept saying it wasn’t my fault, and the more they said it the more I felt like it _was_ my fault? Is that crazy?’

‘That’s an understandable feeling,’ the therapist said. ‘How did it affect your relationships with your parents?’

Jake talked and talked. To begin with he was just filling the time, hoping that something would happen and allow him to get away. But after a while he forgot about that, forgot about the case, and all he was thinking about was his parents and the young, sad, version of himself that still lived inside him.

‘Looks like our time’s up,’ the therapist said, eventually.

‘Oh,’ said Jake. There was so much more he wanted to say, so many more pieces of his past he wanted to dig out. ‘Right. Well, see you next time?’

He checked his phone as he walked out – he had two missed calls from Charles. He called him back.

‘_Heyyy_, so-’ he started, but Charles cut him off.

‘Where the hell are you?’

Jake flinched at the annoyance in his husband’s voice. ‘Funny story – I thought it would be a good idea to check out the therapist’s office just in case-’

‘I found the suspect,’ Charles said, interrupting again. ‘And she confessed to the murder.’

Oh, fuck. So Jake had been snooping around and getting into a fake therapy appointment while Charles had caught the actual murderer? So Jake’s hunch had been _wrong_? That was awkward.

‘_Cool_,’ Jake said. ‘So, uh. That’s good!’

‘I’m going home,’ Charles said, shortly. ‘Are you coming, or do you have any other amazing leads to follow up on?’

Oh jeez. Jake didn’t know what this was – he wasn’t used to Charles snapping at him like that. With trepidation, he said, ‘I’m coming home.’

By the time Charles got back to their apartment, Jake was already there. He was sitting on the couch looking at his phone, but he looked up nervously when Charles walked in.

‘Hey,’ he said. He got to his feet, so it felt like they were facing off against each other.

‘You went to the therapist’s office?’ Charles said.

‘Yeah,’ Jake said. ‘About that.’

‘You did exactly what you said you weren’t going to do?’

‘Look, I’m sorry!’ said Jake. ‘But I really thought I was onto something!’

‘That wasn’t your call to make,’ Charles said. ‘I was the primary on this case.’

‘I know - I just-’

‘Just stop!’ Charles said. ‘Stop trying to defend what you did. It wasn’t a lead - you just have this stupid idea that therapy is bad, and you’re completely in denial about how much you need it. And you almost let that screw up my _case_.’

Jake was looking at him in a way he had never looked at Charles before: with _hurt_. And it killed him to see Jake looking like that, but he was still boiling over with anger. He had to get out of there.

He walked into the bedroom, and Jake didn’t follow. Charles sank onto the bed, ended up lying down looking up at the ceiling, because emotions like this usually left him horizontal. He was thrumming with anger and annoyance – which was ridiculous. He _never_ got angry at Jake.

At least, he hadn’t for a long time. They had fought a couple of times before they had got married, during stressful situations when emotions were running high, but it had been easy to make up afterwards. This didn’t feel like those times though – it reminded Charles or something worse.

Once, back before they were together, Jake had screwed up Charles’ homicide case by sleeping with the medical examiner. And Charles had let it go, because he was willing to let a lot go when it came to Jake. But he’d really thought Jake had grown over the past few years, that he’d moved away from being the kind of person who would compromise a case for his own desires.

Charles wanted to talk to someone, but the person he usually talked to wasn’t an option, and he and Jake fought so rarely that he didn’t have a precedent for this. In the end, he called Rosa.

‘What do you want?’

‘I just yelled at Jake.’ He groaned. ‘It was _terrible_.’

‘Wait, why?’ said Rosa. ‘I thought you two were disgustingly perfect.’

‘I know,’ Charles said, dejectedly. ‘But he lied to me, and he went after a lead that wasn’t even a real lead, and he won’t go to therapy and I hate it! I just want Jake to be _happy_!’

That was when Charles looked up and saw Jake standing in the doorway.

‘Can we talk?’ Jake said, softly.

‘I’ve gotta go,’ Charles said to Rosa.

‘Oh, thank god,’ she said. Charles hung up.

Jake was looking at a point on the wall somewhere over Charles’ shoulder. ‘When I was in that therapist office,’ he said, ‘I had to pretend to be a patient. It was a whole thing. But I started talking about my parents and about how I went to therapy before and hated it and all this stuff and... I think you were right. I think I should make a real appointment with a shrink.’

Charles was feeling so many things – relief mostly, with the bitter traces of anger and frustration still there. And anxiety, and concern, and love. Because he wanted Jake to be honest with him and follow his instructions when they worked cases together, but most of all he wanted Jake to be okay.

‘Really?’ he said.

‘Yeah.’ Jake crossed the room and settled on the bed beside Charles, cross-legged, one of his feet bouncing. ‘I didn’t even get to Florida, or prison, or you getting stabbed, or anything. And I think maybe I need to talk about those things.’

Charles took Jake’s hand and squeezed it. ‘I think that’s a really good idea, sweetheart.’

‘I’m sorry for being a dick about it. I just had a not-great experience with it before. And I guess I didn’t like that it works so well for you when it didn’t work for me.’

‘I wish you’d just _said_ that,’ Charles said.

‘I’m sorry,’ Jake said. ‘And I’m sorry about the case.’

‘It’s okay,’ Charles said.

‘No, it isn’t,’ Jake said. ‘You were right to be mad. I was being a bad cop, and a bad partner, and a bad husband.’ He looked so sincere, and it wrenched at Charles’ heart.

‘Oh, Jake,’ he said. ‘You’re not a bad husband. You’re the _best_ husband.’

‘But I screwed up!’ Jake said. ‘I was being so _dumb_.’

Charles took Jake’s face in his hands and kissed him gently. ‘You’re not dumb,’ he said. ‘It was… we both made mistakes. I should have paid attention to how you were feeling about the whole therapist thing rather than just focusing on the case.’

‘I should have listened to you,’ Jake said.

‘It’s okay. I caught the murderer, you figured out what you need. It all worked out.’ Charles’ anger had dissipated, leaving him with only the concern and the relief and the _love_. He lay back down, and Jake gravitated to his side and draped an arm around him. They lay there for a moment, neither of them speaking.

Charles wished he hadn’t yelled at Jake. Because Jake was hurting, and Charles should have been more understanding about it, more calm. He had been uncharitable when he compared this case to the medical examiner incident – that was just sex, and this was something a lot more complicated.

‘You know I _am_ happy, right?’ Jake said, cutting through Charles’ thoughts.

‘What?’

‘You said you wanted me to be happy. And I _am_. You make me happy.’

‘I know,’ said Charles. ‘But you’ve been through a lot. I mean, I think everyone in our job could use therapy – I think _everyone_ could, actually. But you’ve been through so much. I worry about you.’

‘Yeah,’ said Jake. ‘I guess I always want to act like I’m fine, but… maybe I’m not?’

Charles ran a comforting hand over Jake’s back. Because of course Jake wasn’t fine – how could he be? ‘I know, sweetheart. But it’s gonna be okay.’

They fell silent for a moment.

‘I’m gonna end up all well-adjusted like you.’ Jake mused. ‘I’ma start saying things like ‘repressed’ and ‘denial’ and ‘Oedipus complex’.’

‘Why do you keep bringing that up?’ Charles said. And then, ‘I think therapy is gonna be really good for you. I know a guy who’s really great – a co-worker of the guy I see. You will love having him inside of you.’

‘You’re okay with me having another guy inside of me?’ Jake said, his grin evident in his voice.

‘You know what I mean,’ said Charles.


End file.
